


Wolfsbane

by BronzedViolets



Series: Call of the Moon [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alpha Sherlock, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Anal Sex, Angst, Eventual Parent!Lock, M/M, Omega John, Omega Verse, Rimming, Rough Sex, Self-Acceptance, Self-Hatred, Werewolf Sex, Werewolf Sherlock, Werewolves, Wolf!lock, like literally - Freeform, mentions of mpreg, switch!lock, transcript courtesy of Ariane Devere, were!lock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 23:59:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6134494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BronzedViolets/pseuds/BronzedViolets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Every fourth week Sherlock would answer the call in his blood and John would pretend to sleep until Sherlock returned, sliding into the bed at the break of dawn like an apology. On those mornings they would make love, Sherlock lying sweet and pliant beneath him. And yet… somehow in the tumult of hot breath and burning kisses, John could not shake the conviction that an emotional subterfuge was taking place, a legerdemain of the heart that he could only glimpse from the corner his eye."</p><p>John comes back from Afghanistan a broken man and meets Sherlock Holmes, a brilliant Alpha Wolf, who might be even more broken than him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Waning Moon

**Author's Note:**

> I am just going to let this speak for itself….
> 
> P.S. I corrected some minor typos 2016-03-21
> 
> As always you can follow my mostly safe for work blog on Tumblr @ https://www.tumblr.com/blog/shipping-by-numbers
> 
> Betaed by the amazing SuperBlue, you can follow her on Tumblr @ http://justsuperblue.tumblr.com/
> 
> Not Brit-picked but I am always open to volunteers… hint hint…
> 
> Also comments / conscrit are always welcome ( :

January 29th, 2010 

When John Watson limped into St. Bart’s and saw Sherlock Holmes for the first time, his first thought was nothing more than a spark of gratitude that it was not another one of his med school colleagues. Seeing Mike Stanford again had been one more indignity in the unending series of painful non-events that had been his life since being invalided out of the RAMC. He did not relish the thought of explaining his present circumstances to someone else who remembered him from his days as a hot-shot surgery resident, back when he was young and whole and his life was full of promise.

That spark grew into something else, something that warmed the cold and parched places inside of him when the stranger handed him back his mobile and looked at him for the first time.

“I’m a Wolf, I play the violin when I’m thinking. Sometimes I don’t talk for days on end. Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.”

John was struck momentarily dumb, and had to give himself a mental shake before he was able to respond. “No, I mean… Who said anything about flatmates? We don’t know a thing about each other; I don’t know where we’re meeting; I don’t even know your name.”

The man’s eyes raked over him for a long second before he launched into an array of deductions that left John dazzled. To have someone look at him, really look at him, was intoxicating and if John was honest with himself, more than a little arousing.

In retrospect John wondered if Sherlock’s barrage was intended to woo him or just to distract him from the revelation of his Lycanthropy. While it was true they didn’t burn Wolves at the stake anymore, people still tended to be uncomfortable to discover that someone who looked ostensibly ‘normal’ could transform in the blink of an eye and rip your throat out.

John’s own gran would have rolled in her grave to hear her grandson was looking at a flat with one. Until  her dying day she cultivated wolfsbane in a fenced-in corner of her garden. Never mind that it was poisonous enough to kill anyone, human or Wolf, but the old ways die hard.

Honestly, when it came down to it, it really made no difference to John. A couple of the blokes in his unit had been Wolves and they bled red like the rest of them when the Taliban came.

***

The next day, over a plate of pasta e fagioli, John realized that he would do anything to keep Sherlock Holmes in his life,  to be able to soak up the warm sun of his genius. For the first time since he limped off the plane and into a life he no longer felt a part of, he could feel the future opening up before him like a flower unfurling, the claustrophobic bedsit already fading from his memory. He licked his dry lips and leaned forward, cock already semi hard in his trousers.

“So. Do you have a pack then?”

“No, not really my area,” Sherlock replied, attention still fixed across the street.

‘Mm. Oh, right. Were you bitten then?”

Sherlock’s head snapped towards him, his attention no longer on the window. His face was a blank mask.

“Which is fine, by the way,” John continued lamely.

John realized then that maybe he had blundered into sensitive territory. There was still a lingering prejudice against the bitten. Popular opinion being that Wolves born and raised in a pack were more stable.

“I know it’s fine,” Sherlock replied, voice still carefully free of emotion.

If John could have been swallowed by the earth at that very second he would have done it gladly. Meeting Sherlock was the first interesting thing that had happened to him in months, and he could feel it slipping through his fingers like vapour.

John plastered a smile on his face and tried to steer the conversation back into safer waters. “So you’ve got a mate then?”

“No,” came the brusque reply.

“Right. Okay. You’re unattached. Like me. Fine. Good.” John licked his lips again, and looked around nervously, starting to regret his direct approach.

“John, um ... I think you should know that I consider myself a ‘lone Wolf’ if you will. If that is going to be a problem for you…” Sherlock replied, looking profoundly uncomfortable.

While that was an improvement over mortally offended, it was still miles away from what John wanted.

“No,” John interrupted forcibly, cheeks burning in embarrassment. “I wasn’t trying to…I was just saying…someone who looks like you, with those cheekbones and that turned up collar, I mean… I’m just saying, it’s _all_ fine.”

Sherlock looked at him for a moment, and then, apparently coming to some inner decision, nodded sharply.

“Good. Thank you. I…I misunderstood.” Sherlock paused and took a deep breath before continuing.

“While we are apparently ‘doing’ dull personal questions, I was bitten by a Wolf while I was in Uni. My partner’s father had some unsavoury business dealings in the past. An old ‘friend’ went after the son to punish the father. To make a long and tedious story short, I was turned. You can understand why I stay well clear of pack politics.”

Before John could sputter his way through another awkward apology, Sherlock spotted their mark across the street and the game was on.

John showed him exactly how fine it was later that night as he took him in hand pressed up against the wall in the entranceway of Baker Street.

***

The longer John lived with Sherlock the more he came to believe that Sherlock had a complex relationship with his Wolf side.

For someone who fancied themselves an ascetic, eschewing food and sleep when he was on a case, he was shockingly sensual. John had never met a man who took so much pleasure in luxurious fabrics, well cut suits, a drawn out shag, or even a properly made cup of tea.

It would seem natural for him to take pleasure in his dual nature, but that did not appear to be the case. For a Wolf, he spent a shockingly small amount of time in that form. Outside of the nights when the moon was full, Sherlock only ever turned once or twice a month, and then only grudgingly, always retreating behind closed doors to transform.

While it was true that John was no expert, he remembered the Wolves in his unit turning at least every day, to help patrol, stretch their muscles, or even just to playfully chase each other around the camp.

One memorable time he had even surprised Murray and Stevens rutting behind the mess tent, silhouetted by the cold stars of Lashkar Gah. Something about the uninhibited lust, the celebration of life in a desert watered with blood had made an impression on John. Before meeting the bullet that would send him home, he had passed more than one long night alone in his bunk touching himself to that image.

Maybe it was just the boredom inherent in a long military campaign, but they seemed to take an almost sensual joy in it that Sherlock did not seem to share.

John couldn't help but wonder if Sherlock's past struggles with drugs were merely a symptom of this. An overcompensation sublimated into chemical excess as a reaction to the constant struggle to restrain his base desires and instincts.

March 29th, 2011 

It had been almost 15 days since Sherlock last turned and John was at his wits end. Even the endlessly sympathetic Mrs Hudson had lost her temper after a four hour violin massacre. She had marched up the stairs, thrown a freshly baked Battenberg sponge at him, and stomped back down in high dudgeon.

“Sherlock, I don’t mean to push you,” started John as he swept up cake crumbs, “but wouldn't you feel better if you changed for a bit?”

“It is just transport John,” shouted Sherlock before rolling off of the couch. Even though it was not even 9:00pm Sherlock stalked across the flat to their bedroom to throw himself facedown across the bed, a sad trail of marzipan still marking their landlady’s direct hit on the back of his suit. John followed and cautiously lay down next to him. Eyes carefully fixed on the ceiling, John finally asked the question that had been plaguing him for months.

“Are you ever going to tell me what happened… I mean… with the way that you are?”

Sherlock rolled over to face the window and for a second John thought he was not going to answer his clumsy question, but then the rough baritone continued after a long pause.

“Do you remember what Sebastian Wilkes said at the bank? Everyone in Uni hated me. Everyone except for Vitthal,” Sherlock paused, his voice tinged with regret.

“Who?”

“Vitthal Trivedi, Victor Trevor. He was always Vitthal to me though,” Sherlock continued thoughtfully. “He was the first real friend I think I ever had. We met at Cambridge while I was reading chemistry. He had faced down more than his fair share of small mindedness in the past himself. His family was from India, and he was openly gay so I think he went out of his way to make other people feel comfortable. I had known for ages that I was gay but I had never… I mean… He was beautiful and kind and we both knew it wouldn't last but it was…” Sherlock paused then to try and find the right word, “nice.”

John swallowed hard to try and get rid of the lump in his throat. Something about the distant way Sherlock was speaking made his stomach clench unpleasantly.

“When Vitthal's father was a young man he had cheated a business partner in Australia. It took 35 years but it finally caught up with him. We were in Vitthal's flat when two men burst in. I think they meant to change him but they made two serious mistakes. One, they didn't know I would be there, and two, they did not take into account Victor’s haemophilia.”

“Why did they want to change him?” John asked, genuinely puzzled. He had seen first hand what a threatened Wolf was capable of doing. It made as much sense to him as bursting into the flat to hand the son of their enemy a loaded gun.

“You know how it is here John, people sometimes cross the street to avoid us. In Mumbai it is so many times worse. In 1955 when the law was changed to prevent caste based discrimination against the _Dalits_ , the law preventing Wolves from holding public office or owning property was left in place. For the Trivedi family, having their first born son turned would have been a public humiliation. I think it was meant as a message to Mr Trivedi. That everything he had built would be destroyed. We were in the middle of studying when the doorbell rang. Vitthal answered it and suddenly he was on the ground with a monster on top of him. I was trying to pull it off when I was bitten. I don't think he meant to. For them…for us,” Sherlock corrected himself, absently rubbing the silvered scar across the back of his wrist. “Reflexes are so much harder to control. Either way it was done. The change happens so fast… I tried to fight it, I tried to explain that Victor was a haemophiliac and that he needed medical attention but there was no time. I could feel the change taking me.”

“Jesus Sherlock…” John imagined the change had been awful, but the scope of the tragedy still took him by surprise.

Sherlock continued, his body rigid, muscles tensing in remembered pain.

“They took off running and I was left there in a new body for the first time watching an animal that used to be my boyfriend bleed to death. I couldn't change back, I couldn't call for help and I couldn't even open the door to get out. Do you understand why this is hard for me John? I am a man of science and five nights a month I can't even work a fucking door knob,” he spat.

The profanity, more than anything else, was what really drove home his partner’s distress. John once watched Sherlock accidentally catch the sleeve of his dressing gown on fire in front of Anderson, and that had warranted only a ‘blast’ muttered under his breath. John reached out with a trembling hand to touch Sherlock’s back, to try and offer some comfort no matter how inadequate, but Sherlock was already rolling out of bed and stomping towards the toilet. John could hear the scuffling as he stripped down. The charcoal Wolf that emerged a few moments later gave him a baleful look before clattering off down the stairs.

Sherlock was right. John didn’t understand.

***

Later that night, John rolled off of Sherlock, muscles trembling, and carefully pulled off the condom before tying it up. On creaking knees he padded to the loo to bin it and to grab a wet flannel. The look Sherlock gave him as John turned away was equal parts hunger and something undefined.

When he returned, Sherlock had his eyes closed, fingers steepled, ostensibly in his mind palace. With a soft sigh, John gently and efficiently cleaned the lube off Sherlock’s cleft the best he could considering the prat might as well have been dead for all that he was helping. With the worst of it cleaned off, John gave a desultory wipe at the mess on Sherlock’s belly before giving it up as a bad job. If Sherlock did not want to wake up with dried semen flaking all over his stomach, then he could remain in the land of the living for longer than 30 seconds after they were done having sex. With a tetchy grumble at odds with the bone deep lassitude that comes with having a brilliant fuck, John climbed into bed next to his catatonic lover and turned to face the wall.

John, being a British man of a certain age, was never prone to deep introspection, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Sherlock was still holding back. From the start, their sex life was nothing short of spectacular. As they progressed from that first frantic hand job to the day John slid inside him for the first time, the passion had been there. Sherlock was endlessly inventive and laser focussed, but somehow John was more often than not left with an ineffable sense of sadness. Like the ghost of perfume lingering in the room. As he drifted off to sleep he couldn’t help but ask himself - they were happy weren't they?

***

Time passed. By day they worked in tandem, and three weeks a month they slept side by side. Every fourth week Sherlock would answer the call in his blood and John would pretend to sleep until Sherlock returned, sliding into the bed at the break of dawn like an apology. On those mornings they would make love, Sherlock lying sweet and pliant beneath him. And yet… somehow in the tumult of hot breath and burning kisses, John could not shake the conviction that an emotional subterfuge was taking place, a legerdemain of the heart that he could only glimpse from the corner his eye.

This feeling grew and grew like stones gathering in the pit of his stomach. It was the worst on the days when Sherlock was restless, stalking around the flat like his humanity was an ill-fitting suit. On those days when it got to be too much he would leave his Belstaff crumpled in a heap on the sitting room floor and go run by himself in Regent’s park. John told himself that being left behind did not hurt. He told himself that on two legs, even freed from his limp he could never keep up. He told himself that enough times, that when a madman called Moriarty showed up to play he had almost started to believe it.

Besides, how could you doubt someone’s love for you when they were willing to die with you in the chlorine scented dark of an abandoned swimming pool?

November 20th, 2011 

Months later, looking at the black Wolf broken at the foot of St. Bart’s John knew that he was wrong. Being left behind did hurt.

November 4th, 2013 

John limped up the 17 steps after another gruelling double shift. He didn't need the money, not anymore, but it beat the alternative of sitting alone in an empty flat wondering what it would take to convince Mycroft he was stable enough to have his SIG Sauer back. He pushed the door open and was hanging his coat up on the peg when the sound of someone clearing their throat behind him interrupted his dark reverie.

‘Christ’ he thought to himself. Mrs  Hudson had probably bullied Harry or Greg into coming over to check on him again. With a sigh he turned to admonish his unwanted guest but the words turned to dust in his mouth. Sherlock was standing in the kitchen. John blinked twice. He was a little thinner, maybe more of the wild clinging to him, but his eyes were the same. It was Sherlock and he was alive. John felt the blood rush away from his face as comprehension raced through him with a shock so stark it was like being doused in ice water.

“You utter bastard, how could you do that to me?” John croaked out, rage and grief distorting his voice into something unfamiliar. “I saw you broken on the pavement. How? How?”

Sherlock looked uncharacteristically uncertain as he began trying to explain in a hushed voice. “It was a true wolf that went off the roof not me, you have to understand John, Moriarty had it all planned out. Either I fell or he would kill you and Lestrade and Mrs Hudson.”

John stumbled then, darkness rushing in from the corners of his vision. For a second he was not sure if he would vomit or black-out. Bracing himself with his back against the ancient wall paper, he took deep shuddering breaths until the ringing in his ears abated.

“You are saying you did it for me? Do you have any idea what I went through Sherlock, do you have any fucking idea?”

“I can explain John. I…”

John couldn't take it any more. He felt like he was clinging to his sanity by his fingernails. He raised a trembling fist, ready to to punch those cheekbones when instead he found himself grabbing silky curls with his fingers and falling forwards to taste that soft mouth. It tasted like tears, a hint of the scorched iron of anger, and underneath all of it home.

Pulling away, John panted into Sherlock’s mouth. “Don’t for a second think this is over. I am so angry with you I can’t even… I just… Can we just have this? Now?”

Sherlock gave an uncertain nod and they fell again, this time together. When John ground his hardening cock into Sherlock’s leg it elicited a growl so low that John could feel the rumbling deep inside his own chest, in the atrophied space where his heart used to beat. In response, John grabbed Sherlock’s lapels and half pulled half dragged him to their old bedroom and shouldered open the door.

Sherlock stumbled to a halt, eyes darting from place to place, reading the sad history of the room. Maybe dust was eloquent, but the tale it told here was one of abandonment. A time-capsule of grief. The room had been left empty, undisturbed since the last time John and Sherlock had slept entwined almost two years before.

“Oh John…” Sherlock’s face crumpled before John’s eyes, and that just would not do.

“No,” John hissed. “We are not doing this now.” John toed off his shoes and began to shed his clothes, casting his trousers and jumper aside carelessly and shimmying out of his pants. “You listen to me Sherlock Holmes. It has always been your bloody way. We are going to do this my way. We are going to fuck until you can't see straight, and then I am going drink whiskey until I can look at you without wanting to break your nose, then we are going to talk.” With that, John threw himself backwards onto the stale sheets and reached over into the bedside table to extract a dusty bottle of lube.

Sherlock just stared at him, mouth agape, speechless for the first time in their acquaintance as he watched John squeeze a generous amount out on his fingers and begin working himself open with aggressive thrusts of his fingers.

“I.. I don’t understand… usually we…” Sherlock stuttered, still at a loss for words, eyes dark and luminous in the gloom of the room.

“Shut up Sherlock. I need this, I need to feel you inside me,” John cut him off breathlessly.

“I don't know, I have never…” Sherlock replied, his cautious tone at odds with the large bulge in his trousers.

“Please,” John whispered. Willing Sherlock to understand that he was falling apart and he needed something to hold onto before he broke.

Sherlock was quiet for a long time before he nodded solemnly. “For you John, only you.”

***

They started slow, relearning each other as cautiously as though it were the first time. In a way it was. When Sherlock finally pushed in, John’s eyes drifted shut in pleasure. He felt like he could die, like the misery that lived in his bones would just float away, burned off like mist in the sunlight of Sherlock’s presence. Flat on his back, Sherlock’s warm body between his legs, John released a breath he felt like he had been holding for the last 1 year, 11 months, and 16 days. Eyes still shut he lost himself in the slowly sparking pleasure inside his core, kindled by the susurrus of Sherlock’s panting breaths, and the grounding rhythm of his lover’s beating heart.

When Sherlock stopped his gentle thrusting, John opened his eyes to catch Sherlock’s gaze, to make sure that he was all right. He only had a split second to realize that maybe he had made a mistake.

That was all the warning he had before Sherlock pulled out and brutally flipped him over onto all fours.

John’s surprised protest was lost as Sherlock slammed back into him and his breath was punched out of him with a grunt.

It was all John could do to keep his balance and prevent his face from slamming into the headboard.

“Sher- uhh what-”

His protests died in his throat as he felt a crackle of energy erupt through the air like gunfire. His elbows began to buckle under the sudden pressure of 79 kg of wolf on his back, hot breath on the nape of his neck and the soft tickle of an undercoat against his skin. The stretch was incredible, his cock jumping, as Sherlock’s respectable 6” was suddenly much, much more.

All he could muster was a shocked “umph” before he felt sharp teeth slicing through the gnarled tissue of his shoulder, right where a bullet had punched its way out 5 years before.

It was then that things really went sideways. The very colour seemed to leach from the room. The last coherent thought that John had before a bolt of sensation tore up his spine and he began ejaculating violently all over the dusty sheets, was that there were worse ways to die.


	2. The Waxing Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently Locard’s Exchange Principle applies to fanfiction too... I have invested so much energy working within the Omegaverse that it has snuck into this story. Sorry (or you’re welcome?)
> 
> Thanks again to SuperBlue for her awesome beta work! Check her out on Tumblr @ http://justsuperblue.tumblr.com/
> 
> Or follow my mostly safe for work blog on Tumblr @ https://www.tumblr.com/blog/shipping-by-numbers

John blinked twice, the world shifting vertiginously. Something was wrong. The light was different, their bedroom a stark and alien greyscale. He tried turning his head to the side but the angle was off, the perspective shifting unexpectedly. His head felt like it was packed with cotton wool, shorted out by too much information screaming through his nervous system. The panicked squirming ruffled the dusty sheets beneath him, sending a puff of scent into the air. It was laden with the rich scent of blood and semen and... Sherlock.

The scent of _him_ was enough to spark John’s shaky understanding of what had happened. He could remember coming home to find a ghost in his kitchen. Then there had been kissing and he had pushed Sherlock for more -more than he could safely give apparently. It had been a mistake. It had been too much, the emotions too raw. Sherlock's control over himself, far more tenuous than John had ever imagined, had snapped and the animal side had taken over. The instinct to take, to mark, _to own,_ too much for Sherlock to control after so much time apart. The bastard had _turned him_ , likely not on purpose, but it had definitely happened.

John couldn't lie to himself, not about this. There had been a part of him that had always  wanted it...to  see Sherlock as he truly was, no masks. To be honest, if Sherlock had asked him if he had wanted to be turned he would probably have said yes. While it was beyond the pale for Sherlock to do it without his permission, it had to mean something for his base instinct to be to claim him, even if it meant turning John into something he feared.

It also cast a different light on their time together. He had known deep in his marrow that Sherlock was always pulling away, but he had never dreamed Sherlock was protecting John from himself. Every time Sherlock looked sad when he thought his lover couldn't see him, the broken little boy inside of John had whispered in his ear that what Sherlock was running from was him. The part of John that still remembered hiding purpling bruises after his da’s nights at the pub just couldn’t believe a man as incandescent as Sherlock could truly love him.

The sudden clarity was nothing short of shattering and John was overcome with a rush of love and anger so powerful that it felt like his dry heart would crack open within his chest. Against his control he felt his mouth fill with saliva, his cock growing hot and hard. He tried to shout, he tried to ask what the _sodding hell_ was happening to him but all he was able to produce was a panicked yelp from somewhere deep inside his chest.  

From his side heard a pitiful whine in return. After a few tries he managed to push himself up onto clumsy legs ( _paws?_ ) and turn to see his lover, now apparently his pack mate.

Sherlock was huddled next to him on the bed, his massive Wolf form tucked up against John’s side - a ball of abject animal misery. His muzzle was still glossy with blood, the charcoal fur stained red-black.

It was too much, the adrenaline, the shock, and the change and Sherlock, Sherlock here, Sherlock alive after two fucking years.  He opened his mouth and _howled_. A cacophony of rage and grief released to rattle the glass in the windows and chase the ghosts of loss from the room.

Sherlock was so startled he scrambled  backward, ears flattening, paws scrabbling uselessly on the tangle of sheets and blankets.

That second of shock was all John needed, he launched himself across the bed, teeth flashing, a ballistic missile of anger primed to explode. He could not think any further ahead than lashing out and making sure Sherlock felt his pain, _intimately_.

What he was not expecting was some  newly awakened instinct within him telling him that was not how it was done. A voice inside him told him to dominate, to climb on Sherlock’s back and force him to submit. Somewhere between the thought and the action the two motivations became tangled. Instead of slicing and tearing he found himself pining the larger wolf down under him, his powerful jaws clamped down on his ruff,  hard cock pressed up against the soft fur of Sherlock’s back. Before he knew it, he was sloppily rutting against Sherlock’s back, a series of muffled growls and grunts rising unbidden from the throat. He literally could not control himself as he began furiously chasing his release, Sherlock frozen beneath him.  

John could just feel his orgasm coalescing deep in his groin when Sherlock shook himself out of his shocked immobility with a savage growl, and twisted out from underneath him.

In their human forms John had the clear advantage with his years of military training, but Sherlock had 15 years of experience on four legs that he could not hope to best, not this time anyway. In the blink of an eye it was John who found himself pinned, Sherlock growling his triumph through a mouthful of ruff as he forced the struggling Wolf under him to submit.

To John’s profound shock, the act of Sherlock forcing him down just inflamed his lust further. He found himself arching up like a bitch in heat, whining in desperation as his leaking cock smeared pre-ejaculate across the ruined sheets.  He could _smell_ Sherlock's arousal and for a second thought he would come from that alone. The thought of submitting made something dark and complicated spark within him. His cock twitched hard against his belly, a silky dribble of pre-come sliding down his shaft.

Sherlock seemed to be equally affected by his submission, and with a roar of triumph, thrust home into John’s loosened hole. The small part of John that was still capable of objective thought marvelled in an abstract way how mercifully wet he still was. It almost seemed like more than the artificial slick and come of their previous coupling could account for. He was so wet in fact that as Sherlock began pounding into him with increasingly frantic thrusts, he could feel it trickling down his (hind?) legs in a steady stream. Before he could pursue that train of thought any further Sherlock adjusted his bite on the back of his neck and the changed angle brought the head of  Sherlock’s cock into contact with a deeper part of his inner walls. As Sherlock rode him, his cock slammed into that place again and again. John felt like he had been struck by lightning, a powerful charge of pleasure unlike anything he had ever felt before sparking through his nerves and muscles. His back arched, his shoulders dipping down as his hips pushed up. He felt his balls draw up tight against his groin but instead of ejaculating like he expected, the tension just kept spooling, tighter and tighter within him. Sherlock, for his part was still pounding into him furiously, spittle flying from his slavering jaws as he readjusted his grip on John’s neck. The stretch was incredible and paradoxically seemed to be growing as Sherlock continued to mercilessly fuck him into the mattress.

The pressure inside increased until it felt like the base of Sherlock’s cock would split him in two. Sherlock could barely even thrust any more the fit was so tight. The movement was reduced to a stuttering grind, the head of Sherlock's cock butting against _that spot_ even as he drove his hips so hard John was was slammed bodily forward each time. John could not catch his breath as his pleasure gathered molten in his groin, tendrils of it rising up his core to spark through his spinal column. The feeling rose like a tidal wave, the pleasure ebbing and flowing from groin, to his nipples, past the ripped flesh of his scar, and settling in the lee of his neck, right over each of his clavicles. This had never been a particular erogenous zone of his, but now the skin felt almost as sensitive  and swollen as his cock. Every pump of Sherlock's powerful hips dragging the skin where it was pulled taut by Sherlock's jaws.

Suddenly, whatever knife’ s edge of ecstasy the two of them were balanced on gave. Sherlock un-latched his jaws and  gave one last brutal thrust. His razor sharp canine slid almost delicately through John’s fur into the pulsing skin of his shoulder. At the same time, he brutally forced the swollen base of his cock past the last ring of resistance in John’s opening.

The contrast between the almost surgical slide of teeth into flesh and the animal blunt force of the penetration was staggering. John gave one last helpless bark as the wave of pleasure washing over him finally crested and broke. He began ejaculating copiously as he felt Sherlock spilling hot inside  him, gush after gush of come filling him up, muscles locked so hard around Sherlock’s cock that not a drop spilled out.

The room seemed to dim again as John was subsumed in pleasure, before colour exploded across his vision. The whole room appeared to give a nauseous lurch as John felt the tell-tale prickle of energy crackling through the room, making his fur stand on end.

***

When John’s vision finally cleared, the room was back to its customary chromatic spectrum. He was spread-eagled face down on the bed, naked, human, and lying in a frankly appallingly large pool of semen. Sherlock was a warm weight on his back, his cock still hard as a rock and buried deep in John’s arse.

The resultant tingling pleasure in John's groin was almost enough to overshadow the sharp edged pain of the Wolf bites to the flesh over his scapula and clavicle.

“Jesus sodding Christ Sherlock,” John sputtered, struggling to push himself up against the weight of consulting detective.  

“John, I- uhh... ohhh fuck” Sherlock started, stopping mid sentence as his cock pulsed hard inside John, another hot burst of come spurting within him. John was too shocked to reply as Sherlock’s paroxysm triggered another orgasm in him. His cock twitching and pumping more semen onto the soaked mattress.

“Fuck, Sherlock, I... For God’s sake pull-out!” John gasped as soon as his climax waned.

“I can’ t... I think we are... uhh knotted. John, for the love of God stop squirming,” he choked out, as John’s struggles caused his cock to spurt wetly again.  

After some trial and error, two small climaxes from John, and another one so powerful from Sherlock that he involuntarily bit down on John’s abused shoulder, they managed to roll onto their sides.  

“What’s happening?” John was finally able to ask, breathless and still painfully erect.

“John - you knew that unlike wolves or humans, Wolves have a primary and a secondary gender?” Sherlock managed to gasp out, voice gravelled with arousal.

“Uh -male, female, alpha, omega, beta right? All the Wolves in my unit were betas so I didn’t hear much more than that,” John replied vaguely, focusing his energy on keeping perfectly still despite the crawling tension under his skin.

“Correct John. Approximately 98% of Wolves are betas, 1% are alphas and 1% are omega. I am an alpha, and  I think that despite the odds, it is fairly apparent that you are an omega,” Sherlock trailed off with a groan as his cock pulsed again feebly, eliciting a gasp from John.

“Bu- but why is this happening? Why do I feel like this?” John tried to ask in his ‘No-nonsense Captain Watson’  voice, the effect spoiled by the breathy groan that spilled out from between his lips as Sherlock trailed one hand possessively up his ribs.  

“I...I think when I turned you it uhh...triggered your first heat,” Sherlock managed to choke out, still absentmindedly stroking strong fingers up his side.

“What?” John gasped incredulously. “How long is this going to last?”

“A day or two at most, probably less due to your age. You are not expected back at the clinic for three days so you probably won’t miss any work.”

John opened his mouth to harangue Sherlock for implying he was old, with perhaps an additional scolding for hacking into his work calendar, but he lost his power of speech when one of Sherlock's hands swept over his pebbled nipple.

Sherlock continued speaking into the crook of John’s neck as his opposite hand snaked up to tweak John’s other nipple. “I - uh, we may have bonded, when I bit you the second time - I never paid attention to that sort of thing but I think that bonded us.” His voice sounded sad but as the word ‘bonded’ crossed his lips John could feel Sherlock’s cock jump.

John moaned half in disbelief half in pleasure, bonding he had known about. Murray and Stevens were a bonded pair, and had received special dispensation from the RAMC to be transferred together.

“So what you are saying is you can never leave me again? Even if you wanted to?” John groaned.

Sherlock stiffened behind him as though he had been slapped. “I never wanted to!” he snarled, “I did it to save your life and it almost killed me. You know how I felt about this?” he gestured angrily down at his own body, “I spent most of the last two years tracking criminals through the forests of Serbia, living off of rabbits and shitting in the woods like a common animal. I would do it again in a second if it meant not having to worry about finding you dead and cold with your head blown off,"  Sherlock continued, voice thundering and cock harder than ever.

“I am back and as long as I am alive no one will ever come between us again. If anyone threatens to hurt you like that again, I promise _I will_ tear their throats out.”

With that pronouncement ringing in the air, Sherlock surged forward and sucked hard on the tender gland on the back of his neck until John’s hole twitched hard around his cock, and the two of them were swept under again.

***

The following hours became a blur of need and frantic coupling, the two of them shifting frequently as John’s cycling hormones drove them higher and higher into a froth of animal lust.

When Sherlock was in his human form he kept up a muttered litany of “I’m sorry” and “please forgive me” as he drove into John over and over.  

More than once, a human John was woken from a doze to find Sherlock in his Wolf form sloppily licking John’s arsehole, each lick sending pleasure fizzing through his nervous system until he shifted, semen already spraying across his furry belly as he frantically presented so Sherlock could mount him properly.Sometimes it was John who would wake Sherlock by climbing astride and sinking down on his mate’s almost perpetually hard cock, riding him mercilessly until he found his release.

It took another 12 hours before their fevered coupling finally quenched the thirst of John’ s first heat as an omega Wolf and he fell into a deep dreamless sleep, Sherlock collapsed in a boneless heap next to him.


	3. The Full Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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John woke up muzzily, one hand stretching lazily across the bed to find his mate. When his hand met nothing but empty air he snapped the rest of the way awake, panic rising in his throat.

Sherlock was standing in the corner, something about his posture telegraphing that he had been standing there for a long time. His face was chalk white, save for the rusty smudges of blood around his mouth. Ironically he was the one who looked like he had seen a ghost.

“What?” John blurted out, numinous dread rising in his chest.

“You are gravid. I can smell it.” Sherlock rich baritone was strangely devoid of emotion.

“Gr- what? I don't understand”

“Pregnant John. You are pregnant. You are carrying our child.” On the last word Sherlock's voice cracked, the tremendous wave of emotion bleeding through. He dropped to his knees, eyes filling with tears as he reached out with his big hands towards John’s still flat stomach. Horror and naked wonder warring on his face.

It was as though they were standing on either side of a vast gulf. The road behind Sherlock had been a long one; grief and loss, self denial, self hatred and finally self sacrifice at the foot of St. Bart's. The road between there and here had been a shadowy one, through dark places John had not been invited to follow, but somehow it seemed that Sherlock had found a spark of self acceptance at last. To see the Wolf within as something that could be used to protect his loved ones instead of a curse to grit his teeth and endure.

The absolute unfairness of it all cut through John's chest like a knife. That he was expected to deal with _that_ now too was almost incomprehensible.

The fact that Sherlock was not dead was already more than he could comfortably  bear. His love’s reappearance had cracked and shifted the seismological landscape of John’s heart. Between the nascent bond and the change and their frantic mating, there had been no time nor space to come to terms with a future now richer than John finding a way to join him in the grave. The idea that this madness could have created a child, their child, was the final blow to his fragile equilibrium.

The worst part was Sherlock's eyes, looking at John like he had all the answers. Two and a half years ago, John would have done anything to claw his way into the secret spaces of Sherlock's heart. One year, 11 months, and 16 days ago, John would have done anything to stop him from falling. Now, in their abandoned room, amidst the broken shards of the life they had shared, Sherlock was there, and alive, and finally ready to be all in, to jump and hope that this time John would be there to catch him.

The moment stretched out between them - impossibly long, Sherlock at his feet reaching towards him, imploring John’s with his eyes to say something, _to say anything,_ to tell him what he was supposed to do.

For the first time in their partnership it was John who blinked first. He threw off the tangle of sheets in a panic, needing to escape the shackles of human thought, to be anywhere but here with Sherlock looking at him like _that_. In the blink of an eye a sandy coloured wolf was clattering down the stairs, Sherlock gaping after him.

***

He ran all the way to Harry’s posh flat in West Brompton, almost getting a frying pan to the face for his trouble when he hopped the fence to her back garden and he let himself into her kitchen in the nude. When Harry realized it was her brother, albeit less dressed than normal, she dropped the pan with a clatter and unleashed an admirable string  of profanity to rival anything John had ever heard in the army.

“Jesus H T-Bagging Christ Johnny - What in the _bloody buggering fuck_ happened to you? No wait- Fuck - cover up first. I can see your meat and two veg,” she squealed, tossing a tea towel in his general direction, eyes squeezed shut.

Fifteen minutes later John was ensconced on the couch wearing an old pair of jeans and an ancient Ampthill Rugby polo left behind by Clara after the divorce.  For all that Clara had been a junoesque woman, her feet had been oddly dainty, so it took another 10 minutes and some banging around before Harry managed to scrounge up a pair of trainers he had left with her before his first deployment.

With John finally decent, she plopped a stewed mug of tea down in front of him and then took a seat on the settee across from him, looking for a second every inch the successful barrister she still was despite her decades long battle against alcoholism.

Harry shook a fag out of a crumpled pack of Silk Cuts and lit up with a practiced flick of a lighter.

“Don't even say anything little brother- I am sober, you have to leave me at least one vice. Besides you are one to talk - what happened? Did you get ripped off by a rent boy?”

“Very funny Harry,” John replied tiredly.

“I’m not laughing am I? You break into my flat, starkers, at half past nine in the morning on a Saturday with bites all over your back. What's a girl to think? You're not in trouble are you Johnny?”

For whatever reason, that struck him as hilarious. Their mother, God rest her soul, had worried incessantly about Harry “getting in trouble”. It had been years before he figured out she was worried Harry would find herself up the duff and trapped in an unhappy  marriage, just like her mother before her. The constant hand-wringing on her part was one of the reasons Harry had finally come out despite the predictable over-reaction of their homophobic, bigoted father.

The irony of John being the one to fall pregnant was not lost on him.  With a supreme force of will he managed to choke down the hysterical laughter bubbling up in his chest. He took a few slow shuddering breaths and began speaking, eyes carefully fixed on a spot about two inches above his sister’s head. “Harry, there is something I have to tell you.”

***

It took almost two hours and three  cups of tea for John to share the whole story, from Vitthal, to Sherlock's faked death, to his return and all that came with it.

Harry watched him with wide eyes the whole way through. When he was done speaking, she let the pause go on for a weighted moment while she lit another ciggy. She took a deep drag and then exhaled a long plume of smoke heavenward before narrowing her eyes and going on the attack.

“Cut the shite Johny, why are you here?”

“I just told you why,” John snapped, fingers angrily tapping a tattoo on his knees. “He _abandoned_ me, no word for two bloody years, then has the absolute gall to waltz back into our flat. I should have broken his sodding nose when I had a chance. Then he turns me, and sodding _impregnates_ me and he did something to my head. I can feel him, in there. I know where he is like a sodding compass.”

Harry just waved her hand as though to wave away inconsequential minutiae, and took a sip of cooling tea with a grimace before continuing.

“No you twat. First of all stop saying ‘sodding’ - I keep picturing Sherlock sodomizing you and it is traumatizing, I prefer to avoid thinking about penises if you don't mind. Secondly, I’m not asking why you are mad. That’s obvious. I’d be bloody livid if I were you. I’m asking you why you are _here_ and not at home telling him all that?”

“Were you even listening to me?” John sputtered, fists clenching spasmodically at his sides. “He let me grieve for two years. How could he do that to me?”

Harry slammed her mug of tea back down on the table, her patience clearly starting to fray.

“Stop being stupid Johnny. We both know he did it so that bastard Moriarty wouldn’t kill you. Don’t get me wrong, I would still love to nut Sherlock for what he did to you. When he was...gone, I honestly thought….well I was the one who called that poncy brother of his to suggest someone take your Sig. But now, knowing that without him I would be the last surviving Watson, I kind of want to buy the twat a drink.”

“You don’t understand,” John forced out through gritted teeth. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“So who gives a shite?” Harry shot back. “Nobody said life was easy, or fair. You are what? Running because you have him back and it is not what you expected? News flash Johhny, it never is.”

“That’s not it Harry, you’re twisting my words around. I’m just saying I’m not sure I’m ready for this.”

Harry’s eyes hardened and she leaned forward, pinning John under her gunmetal blue gaze.

“So… before _all of this,_ you were thinking about popping the question. Don’t look at me like that Johnny, there was no other reason for you to ask where Grandpa’s ring was, then when Sherlock ‘dies’ tragically,” Harry threw her hand up in air quotes, “we had you on bloody suicide watch you missed him so much. Now he is back and you are ‘not ready’ for this?  So I have to ask you - is it about the baby or is it about who is having it….”

At the sight of John's wince she went in for the kill the way only siblings can.

“Let me ask you this, if your roles were reversed, and Sherlock was pregnant would you be here? If your answer was yes then you are a bigger arsehole than I thought. I don't know anything about omegas but I can tell you this, being a woman can be shite. The difference is you are just dealing with it now at 42 years old.”  

“You don’t understand, I don’t..I don’t know what to do Harry.” John slumped forward to cradle his head in his hands dejectedly, suddenly too tired to fight.

“You can be honest with yourself for starters. I’m not going to say I like Sherlock because to be honest I think he is a manipulative bastard who is too smart for his own good, but you love him and he loves you. The lunatic faked his own death for you, the least you can do is go talk to him. Tell him you’re scared, tell him you’re not sure if you are ready for a baby, tell him you need a hug for Christ’s sake.  He will be there for you no matter what you decide to do… and so will I.”

With that pronouncement hanging in the air, Harry got to her feet and fished a handful of banknotes from her wallet, surreptitiously rubbing a tear from the corner of her eye as she pressed the money into his hand. “Now get out of here, go find your lunatic. Oh, and Johnny?”

John paused, frozen halfway up off of the couch.

“Go Ampthill FC!”

John shot her a two finger salute as left, wiping his own damp eyes while muttering under his breath how he hoped he did not run into any of the Blackheath rugby lads on the way home.

***

John left Harry’s flat through the front door this time, and after a brief internal debate over whether to go back in and have Harry call him a cab, decided the walk home would do him some good. He was about half way back to the flat when a colourful display in one of the shop windows caught his eye. Like an automaton he came to a stumbling halt before slowly pushing open the door and shuffling in.

***

John had been standing in the aisle at Caramel Baby and Child for over 15 minutes holding a small blue romper in one hand and a small pink one in the other, when he was dragged from his reverie by someone cheerfully calling out his name from the back of the store.

It was Sarah from the clinic. “John how lovely to run into you, are you picking up a prezzie for Mary’s little ones?”

John looked at her blankly for a second before he remembered that Mary Morstan from Radiology had been expecting. He vaguely remembered congratulating her husband David, one of the other locum doctors on the birth of their twins.

“No, it's uh for me,” John surprised himself by answering.  She shot him a confused look so he continued awkwardly.

“I mean it is for ours. Our baby. We are umm expecting.”

“Oh who is the lucky lad or lady?” She gushed, cocking her head to the side inquisitively.  

“It's...erm.. Sherlock.”

“Oh...” she stopped, visibly struggling with what to say next.  “I thought he was... well dead, wasn't he?”

John couldn’t hide his flinch. He nervously turned away, busying himself by carefully folding the rompers and placing them back on the shelf.  “Well- I – short story... not dead.”

Sarah, seemed to have decided to take this at face value, and valiantly plowed forward in the conversation. “I.. Umm, so who is the mother? Did you get a surrogate? I have heard wonderful things about-”

“It's me,” John cut her off bluntly. “I am umm...gravid,” the unfamiliar word tasting strange on his tongue.

“Oh - I didn’t know you were a - I mean not that there is anything wrong with that -I just… Erm congratulations?” She leaned forward and squeezed his hand gently.

John had to give her credit, despite the absolute trainwreck of a conversation, her congratulations actually seemed sincere.

“Thanks,” he managed to choke out gruffly.

“Well, see you at work?” She gestured awkwardly with the wrapped package in her left hand, indicating she had already made her purchase and was ready to leave.

They said their awkward goodbyes and John watched her go, the bell tinkling happily to mark her departure.  He kept staring, staring out after her for a long while, eyes fixed on something only he could see.

***

John stomped back up the stairs to the Baker street flat 6 1/2 hours after he left.

Sherlock leapt off the couch, frantically stubbing out a cigarette in the overflowing Buckingham palace ashtray.  From the looks of him he had spent every minute of John’s absence chain-smoking.

John didn't say anything, he just tossed the package, carefully wrapped in tissue paper of a delicate robin’s egg blue, at Sherlock’s stunned face before stomping up the stairs.

He opened the door of his wardrobe and grabbing a handful of his shirts with a wince as the healing bites throbbed, marched back down the stairs with them past a stunned Sherlock and began angrily hanging them back up in their closet.

When he emerged a quarter of an hour later Sherlock was sitting stock still on the couch. Clouds of tissue paper at his feet, in his hands a tiny green romper, a stylized bumblebee stencilled on the front across the soft fabric.

18 months later 

John and Sherlock lay facing each other on the bed, Victoria a ball of grey fur between them, cloth nappy pinned loosely on her fluffy bottom. She seemed to prefer to sleep in her Wolf form, but was prone to shifting depending on where her dreams took her. By day she was the sunniest tempered baby John had ever met. He never could figure out how a hot-head like himself and a drama queen like Sherlock could have produced such an even tempered, sweet natured child. John like to think that she got that from her namesake. He had mentioned that to Sherlock once in a hormone induced fit of sentimentality. To his surprise Sherlock had nodded solemnly to himself before wandering off quietly . The next day a battered Polaroid photo has appeared in a gleaming mahogany frame on the mantel. In it was a picture of Vitthal, eternally 19 and smiling at the camera, brown eyes limpid and full of kindness.

In the soft glow of the street lights drifting through the hazy curtains, Victoria was the portrait of contentment. She had a belly full of milk and was making soft snuffling noises as she slumbered.

“She is in stage 3 sleep now, it is probably safe to move her,” Sherlock whispered, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

“Ta, do you want to put her in her cot upstairs?” John replied with a cheeky nod back at his bond mate. “My heat is not for another week, I thought maybe tonight I would top?”

Sherlock leaned over and scooped their daughter up, tucking her carefully up against his chest and shooting John a wink as he padded out of the room. “For you love? Anything.”


End file.
